With the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed, the former coalition of rebellious nations set out to assert their own domination over Mesopotamia, ultimately turning against one another. To this end, the Neo-Babylonians campaigned throughout the former Assyrian lands, securing support for their rule and leveling cities that refused. Following the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE (see Jer. 46:2), King Yehoyaqim (Jehoiakim) of Judah switched allegiance to Babylon and began paying an annual tribute to Nebuchadnezzar II.
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM
Following an inconclusive battle between Nebuchadnezzar II and Egyptian forces in 601 BCE, some rulers of cities in Cana‘an and Phoenicia, including Judah’s King Jehoiakim, smelled weakness and rebelled, allying themselves once again with Egypt. In order to ensure a steady stream of income and loyalty, Babylon besieged Jerusalem in 598 BCE. King Jehoiakim died during the siege, and his son, Yehoyakin (Jehoiachin), succeeded him to the throne.12 However, upon capturing Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar II deposed King Jehoiachin, who surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar II after only three months on the throne and was taken into exile along with his family, nobles, and a large number of the residents of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar II replaced Jehoiachin with his uncle, the client king Ṣidqiyah(u) (Zedekiah).
Not only does 2 Kings 24:11–17 record this period of monarchic instability in Judah, but the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle, which preserves the first decade of Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign, corroborates the account:
In the seventh year [of Nebuchadnezzar II, 598/7], the month of Kislimu, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Hatti-land, and besieged the city of Judah, and on the second day of the month of Addaru he seized the city and captured the king [Jehoiachin]. He appointed there a king of his own choice [Zedekiah], received its heavy tribute and sent to Babylon.13
Despite the protests of the prophet Jeremiah and the memory of what had happened to kings a decade before him, King Zedekiah also rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar II and entered into an alliance with Egyptian pharaoh Apries, whom Jeremiah calls Ḥofra‘ (44:30).14 As the saying goes, Zedekiah backed the wrong horse. In order to deal with what was becoming a constant, rebellious nuisance, Nebuchadnezzar II again marched his army to Jerusalem and again besieged it (cf. 2 Kings 25:1). However, this time, Nebuchadnezzar II had had enough; instead of simply installing a new, loyal puppet king, he was intent on destroying Jerusalem.
Following a thirty-month siege, the city of Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar II’s army. To make an example out of King Zedekiah for others who might consider rebelling, Nebuchadnezzar II’s army captured Zedekiah, his family, and his royal guard as they attempted to flee, took them to the Babylonian king’s field headquarters at Riblah, slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons in front of him so that he could witness his monarchic line come to an end, and then gouged out his eyes, both as a military punishment and a personal humiliation (2 Kings 25:4–7).15
Nebuchadnezzar II then proceeded to level the city of God. The fall of Jerusalem is described in 2 Kings 25:8–12. The text says that Nebuchadnezzar II sent the captain of his personal guard, Nebuzar’adan, to finish the deed:
Nebuzaradan . . . burned the house of the LORD, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. All the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon—all the rest of the population. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest people of the land to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil.
Following the capture and mutilation of Zedekiah and the slaughter of his family, the nobility and any learned men or skilled laborers were deported to Babylon, while the poorest of the poor were left behind to work the fields for this new Babylonian province under the governorship of Gedalyahu (Gedaliah) son of ’Aḥiqam son of Shafan (2 Kings 25:22). It is this exile that is the final and most recognized exile of Judahites to Babylon because it accompanied the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.
Jerusalem was gone. The promised eternal reign of the line of David in Jerusalem (cf. 2 Sam. 7:16) had come to an end. The unthinkable came to pass; the house of the Lord—the Jerusalem Temple—lay in ruins. This event in ancient Israel’s history—the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon—marks one of the lowest points in the history of Judaism and was a theologically traumatic event that would scar the collective Jewish psyche and linger in its memory for years to come.
EVIDENCE OF JUDAHITE EXILES IN BABYLON
Archaeological evidence confirms the presence of Judahite exiles in Babylon. From 1899 to 1917, the self-trained German archaeologist Robert Koldewey excavated 290 clay cuneiform tablets dated to 595–570 BCE from barrel vaults beneath a public building near the Ishtar Gate. The building possessed multiple rows of rooms that may have been the residence of the exiled Judahite king, his family, and his nobles. The tablets are presently housed in the south wing of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Among these tablets are what appear to be records of rations given to King Jehoiachin while in Babylon. One tablet reads:
10 (sila of oil) to . . . [Ia]-’-kin, king of Ia[ . . . ]
2½ sila (oil) to [ . . . so]ns of the king Ia-a-hu-du [i.e., Judah]
4 sila to 8 men from Ia-a-hu-da-a-a [i.e., Judah] . . .16
Another tablet reads:
1½ sila (oil) for three carpenters from Arvad, ½ sila each
11½ sila for eight from Byblos, 1 sila each
3½ sila for seven Greeks, ½ sila each
½ sila to Nabû-êṭir the carpenter
10 (sila) to Ia-ku-ú-ki-nu, [i.e., Jehoiachin] the son of the king of Ia-ku-du [i.e., Judah]
2½ sila for the five sons of the king of Ia-ku-du [i.e., Judah] through Qa-na-a-ma.17
The cuneiform texts appear to corroborate the text of 2 Kings 24:12–15. Furthermore, they appear to confirm the text of 2 Kings 25:27–30, specifically, that King Ia-ku-ú-ki-nu (Jehoiachin) of Iaku-du (Judah) gave himself up, was treated well in Babylon, and was ultimately released:
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison; he spoke kindly to him, and gave him a seat above the other seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes. Every day of his life he dined regularly in the king’s presence. For his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion every day, as long as he lived.
Thus, the archaeological record appears to confirm the presence in Babylon of exiles from Judah. But the Babylonians also provided the Bible with one of its most vivid reflections on the destruction of Jerusalem—a book that was created specifically to mourn the loss of Jerusalem, the book of Lamentations, to which we now turn.
LAMENTATIONS
The book of Lamentations preserves a series of well-crafted poems dedicated to a single event: the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It begins somberly, as the stunned, heartbroken poet opens his composition with the simple Hebrew word eykah, literally, “How?!” How did this happen? Why, God, why? This grief-stricken overture sets the tone for the remainder of the distraught author’s internal struggle to find the right words to describe the depths of his depression and sorrow stemming from this disastrous event and to answer the central question: How the hell did we get here? How did we end up like this?
In order to understand Lamentations, it is helpful to understand the musical genre of the blues. The blues are songs about hard times. People “sing the blues” when they are sad. But people don’t sing the blues because they want to be sad; that’s what Morrissey and Radiohead are for. People sing the blues because in expressing their disappointments and sorrows in a creative, composed way, they can share those feelings with others wh
o feel the same way, and through this shared empathy, this shared grief, they can together begin to feel better. Therefore in one sense, blues songs preserve a poetic hope within their lyrics that both performer and listener share and from which both can take comfort. The same is true for the biblical book of Lamentations.
Lamentations is part of both Jewish and Christian Bibles, but it is arranged differently in each. In the Hebrew Bible, Lamentations is found among the Ketuvim, or the “Writings,” which include the Five Megillot, or scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Qohelet [Ecclesiastes], and Esther), the poetic books (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), and the books of Daniel, Ezra-Neḥemiah (one book in the Hebrew Bible, two books in the Christian canon), and Chronicles. However, in the Christian canon Lamentations is placed after the prophecy of Jeremiah, as it is traditionally attributed to him.
In the Jewish faith, Lamentations is traditionally read during the Jewish holiday of Tish‘a B’Av, or the “Ninth of Av,” which commemorates the date of the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.18 Thus, Lamentations is read to collectively commemorate the sadness Judah felt when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem or, in a more accurate sense theologically, how God allowed Babylon to destroy Jerusalem because of Judah’s sins.
What’s most interesting about the book of Lamentations is that the first four of its five chapters are in the form of an acrostic, which is a clever literary construction that is artistically dependent upon the very nature of the Hebrew alphabet. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with ’aleph, bet, gimel, dalet, and so on. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 of Lamentations each have twenty-two verses—each line beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet—and each chapter begins with the word eykah (), “how.” Chapter 3 is a triple acrostic that has sixty-six verses, with three lines for each of the twenty-two successive letters of Hebrew alphabet. The first three verses begin with words that start with the letter ’aleph, the next three with the letter bet, and so on. Chapter 5 is not an acrostic, but still has twenty-two lines. Many English Bible readers do not notice the acrostic either because they do not read Hebrew, because they do not realize that the word order of Hebrew is different than in English, or because the English words used to translate their Hebrew counterparts don’t always start with the equivalent letter. For instance, eykah () begins with an ’aleph, but its English equivalent, “how,” begins with an h, not an a.
So Lamentations is cleverly structured poetry to be sure, but it is also very theologically profound. It relays the collective Jewish community’s sadness and confusion over the loss of Jerusalem from a self-blaming theological point of view: God abandoned the people only because of their sinfulness, not because of his ineptness. Lamentations 1:8 states, “Jerusalem sinned grievously, so she has become a mockery,” placing the fault for the exile on the people, not on God. Lamentations 1:18 reads, “The LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word,” while in 1:22 the writer petitions God: “Deal with them [his enemies] as you have dealt with me because of all my transgressions.” The Babylonian exiles blamed themselves for the destruction of Jerusalem and their deportation to Babylon; this theological use of self-blame to explain disaster also pervades many of the other books of the Bible.
We also see self-blame still commonly used by individuals today to explain disaster: “Something bad happened in my life, so God must be punishing me because of something I did wrong.” This theological mind-set can easily be traced back through Jewish theology to the fall of Jerusalem.
And yet surprisingly, Lamentations is also the location of one of the best-known Bible passages offering a declaration of hope that the Lord will one day relent from his punishment of his people. In fact, many Christians may recognize Lamentations 3:22–24 from a popular praise song: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’” Lamentations 3:25–33 then encourages patience from those who believe God has abandoned them.
Lamentations 5:20–22, the last three verses of the book, end with a bittersweet, openly pessimistic, and rightly confused pronouncement of hope:
Why have you forgotten us completely?
Why have you forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored;
renew our days as of old—
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are angry with us beyond measure.
The note of passive-aggressive pessimism on which the lament ends effectively conveys the level of distress that defines Lamentations as a whole. The faithful call on God to deliver them, unless, of course, God is too angry with them, in which case they understand.
Fortunately, the exiles would return to Jerusalem, and the story of the city of God would continue. It is also worth pointing out that in modern Jewish liturgy, v. 21 is reread after v. 22 to keep from ending on a negative note. Given the later Jewish successes in Jerusalem and given the optimism (albeit tempered with a dose of tentative near-comedic pessimism) with which many modern Jews operate in today’s world, it is good that v. 21—“Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old”—is repeated, as it reflects a sense of tempered hope and not of hopeless despair.19
PSALMS OF LAMENT
The book of Lamentations is not the only place in the Bible where we find theological reflections on the despair of losing the holy city of Jerusalem by worshippers of YHWH who wonder why he abandoned them. There are also particular psalms that are songs of lament. Communal laments, which are formal laments on behalf of a congregation of believers, include Psalms 44; 60; 74; 79; 80; 85; and 90. There are also personal laments like Psalm 22, the opening lines of which Jesus is said to have quoted from the cross:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”20
Perhaps one of the best-known lament psalms in the Bible is Psalm 137, which depicts an exiled Jerusalemite seated “by the rivers of Babylon” lamenting his fate: “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps” (v. 1). Verse 3 recalls the mocking of the Babylonian overlords, asking the exiles to sing presumably one of the hymns21 praising Jerusalem as the inviolable city of God: “For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’” But the loss of Jerusalem caused their mouths to remain closed. Verse 4 asks, “How could we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?”
The psalm then invokes a promise that the singers will never forget Jerusalem:
“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget (its skill). Let my tongue cling to (the roof of) my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy” (vv. 5–6; translation mine).
And speaking of forgetting, what many people forget is that Psalm 137 continues after this point, but many people either haven’t read it or don’t want to read it. This is because the conclusion of Psalm 137 is a brutal and incredibly vindictive passage, expressing a blessed happiness over bloody vengeance against the infants of Israel’s enemies (which doesn’t necessarily make for good praise hymns in modern churches and synagogues).
But Psalm 137:7–9 is not atypical for songs in the ancient Near East, which often conclude with a prayer of revenge, such as this execration against Edom (whom the Bible says mocked Judah and stood idly by as Jerusalem fell) and against Babylon, the great “devastator,” who destroyed the kingdom of Judah and the previously “inviolable” capital of Jerusalem:
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
Down to its fo
undations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock.
As horrendous as the idea of grasping newborn babies by the ankle and swinging their soft young skulls into rocks may sound, we cannot overlook that this is the conclusion of Psalm 137—the vengeful prayer that the children of Babylon will be murdered by having their heads dashed against the rocks. This is the prayer of the Jerusalem exiles in Babylon—a prayer that is preserved in the songbook of ancient Israel. An immoral act against innocents such as this is abhorrent and indefensible by any modern standard, yet this is the degree to which the author of this psalm despised Babylon.
DANIEL
The book of Dani’el (Daniel) is also set during the period of the Babylonian exile, although most scholars conclude that its composition wasn’t begun until the late Persian period (539–332 BCE) and its later chapters weren’t composed until the late Hellenistic period (332–167 BCE). The reason for this is because chapters 2–7 of Daniel are written in Aramaic, not in Hebrew, and the first half of the book (chaps. 1–6) recounts tales of the Babylonian and later Median royal courts, while the second half of the book (chaps. 7–12) is a book of apocalyptic visions or revelations.
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